It's all about MY WRITING

I wrote my first novel when I was seven years old. It was the comic story of an inept explorer hunting the Woola Woola Lion in Africa. I had never been to Africa, but I surfed the encyclopedia for background information. And since I had made up the Woola Woola lion, I knew more about it than anyone else. Looking back, I see that novel as the quintessential tale of the artist’s journey – living in a strange land looking for something that may not exist. I never finished the novel. The only copy of it has vanished, which allows me to imagine that it could have been a masterpiece.

It was my last fictional masterpiece for over 50 years, until a conversation about garden trolls and blue tooth technology led me back to writing. Fueled by a late-night indulgence in fair-traded organically grown dark chocolate, I sat up in bed at 2:30 AM and scribbled out a story called ‘The Troll with a Blue Tooth.’ Troll story after troll story followed. Word spread among the monster community. A monster under the bed came to me and requested (as only monsters can) that I tell her story too.These stories were not unsuccessful (don’t you love the vagueness of that double negative?). They made audiences laugh. They earned me rave rejections from one of the best children’s magazines. And a gardening magazine bought the short story I wrote as a personal challenge to see how many apple names I could include (hint: the answer is 28). My story Grand Theft Tree appeared in the Autumn 2010 issue of GreenPrints, the Weeder’s Digest. This story didn’t have any monsters, but a couple of the characters were rotten apples.

Meanwhile, I’d written myself into a corner with my monster under the bed story.Oops, time for a change.That’s when I got the idea for a chapter book about a pirate-talking witch who's not having a good day.See ‘what’s new’ for the gory details on Baba Yaga's Arrful Day.

None of this would have happened without support from my ‘peeps’ - my local SCBWI group and my cat Agatha, the muse that mews.